James Patterson's Alex Cross has been played by Morgan Freeman but now the author is turning his hand to romance, based on his own life experiences

He is a book-writing phenomenon who has made a fortune from his taut, tight thrillers. James ­Patterson’s action-packed murder mysteries have also made him the most borrowed author at UK libraries.

And his most famous creation, former FBI agent and psychologist Alex Cross, has been played by smooth voiced acting legend
Morgan Freeman
and most recently, Tyler Perry in film spin-offs.

But he has embraced a new genre for his latest novel, First Love, which is based in part on his very own true romance.

The New Yorker, 66, says: “It’s closer to who James Patterson is than the thrillers. I’m not very violent at all.

“I just found that writing thrillers was a way to make a good living. So there is a softer side. My life is much more family-orientated.

“As
you get older, the idea of first love becomes more interesting. You like to go back and hang out there for a while and remember how it was.”

The
story, co-written with author Emily Raymond, charts the adventures of two youngsters who take a road trip across America and fall in love. But
a sad twist in the tale leads to a tear-jerking finale.

It
was inspired by the heartbreaking story of his own first real love, Jane Blanchard, who James met when he was in his 20s. He was with her for seven years.

New venture: First Love

“We were in one of the post offices on Broadway one day when she collapsed,” he recalls. “She’d had a seizure. Then we found that she had a brain tumour
and a limited amount of time to live.

“The
way we chose to get through it was to take the attitude, ‘Isn’t it lucky you didn’t die that day? We have today’. She was a terrific person.

“When she got sick,
she was bald half the time. I was in love with a bald woman! That teaches you something about love and the fact that the visual thing isn’t as important as we think it is.

“She would wear a different goofy hat every day because she didn’t want people to be depressed.”

james continues: “We all know that we’re going to die some day, but in this case, it made it very concrete and we had to deal with it. She went on living for another two years and
it was a very special time.”

They lived their life in the present for those two years, he reflects.

“We
tried to make every day count. If we went out for a walk – and a lot of
the time I was pushing her around in a wheelchair – there was something
special about it.”

James was with Jane to the end in hospital and can still vividly recall the fateful day she died.

“I remember sitting there holding her hand and whispering to her and she whispered back to me to have a life,” he says.

“She didn’t say, ‘Move on’, but she did say she wanted me to be happy.”

But nothing helped him cope with her death.

“I
can remember crying almost every day from the day she got sick and maybe a year or so after. I was a basketcase,” the bestselling author admits. His therapy was to throw himself into work at top American advertising agency J Walter Thompson.

“I didn’t want to be by myself at all. I could not go on a vacation.

“That’s when I threw myself into ­advertising. Before that my priorities were Jane and writing books.

“I went from copywriter to creative director to chairman in about three years.

“I didn’t write any books for a couple of years.

“It was heavy-duty grief. I’d come home at night and sit playing four or five songs that were special to us. It was insane.”

Many
years later he married Sue, an advertising art director 10 years his junior, with whom he has a 15-year-old son, Jack. They live in a £7million colonial-style house overlooking the ocean in an elite part of
Palm Beach, Florida.

Hollywood actresses Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow, and the Kennedys, all have summer homes nearby.

James
works seven days a week out of a two-room office suite there. The ­community around them is a sociable one but they live a fairly quiet life, he says.

“We have family and good friends we’ve made down here but other than the ­occasional charity, we will not go out to big social events.

“It just doesn’t appeal to us.”

He gets up at about 5am to write – in longhand before an assistant types it up.

James then walks nine holes of a golf course before writing some more.

All
the hard work has paid off, thanks to his popular Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club and Michael Bennett series, along with his young adult and children’s titles.

As his son Jack was growing up, James discovered he did not seem that keen on reading. So one summer instead of setting him jobs to do, he asked Jack to read for an hour or so every day.

At
first it was a chore for the youngster, but within months he was devouring books off all kinds. And Jack gave his father the idea of writing for children and teenagers too – such as with his Witch & Wizard series, which seems to combine Harry Potter with The Hunger Games.

“There are millions of kids who have never read a book that they liked, and that is a disgrace,” says James.

“What I’m trying to do is at least wake up several thousand of them.”

Last year he was the second highest-earning author after Fifty Shades of Grey writer EL James, making a ­staggering £60million, according to business magazine Forbes.

One in every 17 hardbacks sold in the
US is his. He has sold more than 275 million copies of his books worldwide. James grew up in Newburgh, on the outskirts of New York, the son of an insurance executive and a teacher.

He began writing detective books while working as an advertising copywriter.

Getty

Legend: James and Morgan Freeman who played his most famous character

James
says: “I never read any junk fiction until I was in my twenties and I read The Day of the Jackal and The Exorcist. I didn’t think I could write Ulysses but I did think I might be able to write one of the page-turners.”

He wrote his
first thriller The Thomas Berryman Number, at age 25. The book was initially rejected by 26 publishers but it eventually won the prestigious Edgar best first mystery in the US, all while he was still working in advertising.

Part
of the reason for his massive sales may be down to the fact that he brings out so many books every year – it’s usually in double figures.

He
currently has 25 ­manuscripts and screenplays in his office that are works in progress. It is no surprise that he has employed an army of co-writers for some time. “The way the co-writing works is that I will write the original outline and then the co-writers write the first draft
and then I write all the subsequent drafts.”

Now
more film adaptations may also be on the cards – however Patterson wants more control over the finished product than he had with previous movies Along Came A Spider, Kiss The Girls and more recently Alex Cross.

“I’d like to see more of my work out there. I haven’t loved the movies so far.

“Morgan Freeman is great and the movies were OK, but the last Alex Cross wasn’t that good.”

He
has his eye on British screen star Idris Elba for future Alex Cross films. “I’m much more involved now because I didn’t like the process in the past,” he adds.

And despite his millions in the bank, the novelist has no thoughts of retirement.

“You retire from work but not from play. For me, this is enjoyable.”

First Love by James Patterson and Emily Raymond, published by Century, priced £14.99, is available now.